Marlboro Democracy

Marlboro Democracy

Marko Zlomislic

The future lies in cosmic solitude. I picture a weightless individual in a little ergonomic armchair, suspended outside a space capsule, with the earth below and the interstellar void above. Paul Virilio, Interview with JÉRÔME SANS

Justice bleeds and is punished for its accusations. Our skin stretched to the breaking point cannot forgive the government appointed torturer who performs her duties with angelic conviction. The rose is without a why but the corpse is not. Bits of flesh floating on the waves, falling off the broken trees after the tsunami's visitation. Mad Max lives on to ride again together with John Wayne down a burnt out highway. The kangaroo god will box them to a knockout. My tongue nailed to the collected works of Mao Zedong. Blood fills Tianamen Square. Marlboro democracy. Bombs and burnt skin in the dryness of the desert. The hedgehog curled up with quills exposed tastes the flavor of its own death. Bruce Wayne, Gotham Oedipus, full of costumes and off shore tax shelters distributes frozen turkeys in the dead of winter to orphans without ovens. What would capitalism be without humble saints extolling the virtues of poverty while the Franciscans, brothers of the wolf and the fire, grown fat walk around Rome in Nike footwear. Our home and stolen land.

-------------------Marko Zlomislic is professor of philosophy at Conestoga College, Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Kitchener, Ontario. He has recently published

Jacques Derrida's Aporetic Ethics with Lexington Books and is currently writing a critique of Slavoj Zizek's work.